U.S. Pat. No. 3,982,415, which is assigned to the assignee of the present application, discloses a rolling operation for forming splines in thin-wall sleeves of power transmitting members. This rolling operation is performed by mounting the thin-wall sleeve on a toothed mandrel that is located between a pair of toothed dies. Movement of the pair of dies in opposite directions as each other meshes the die and mandrel teeth with the sleeve therebetween to form the splines at diametrically opposite locations while the mandrel rotates in coordination with the die movement. Vehicle automatic transmissions conventionally incorporate the type of splined sleeve that can be formed by this thin-wall spline rolling operation much more economically than impact splining that was previously utilized to perform the splining.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,028,922, which is also assigned to the assignee of the present application, discloses dies which have a particular toothed forming face construction for performing thin-wall sleeve splining in accordance with the process discussed above. These dies are disclosed as either being of the straight gear rack type or of a rotary type such as disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,045,988 which is also assigned to the assignee of the present application.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,155,237, which is likewise assigned to the assignee of the present application, discloses a thin-wall sleeve splining machine of the type discussed above with an automatic loader used to mount and remove the sleeve from the mandrel. Loading and unloading members of the machine loader cooperate with each other to move the sleeve onto the mandrel for the splining operation and to thereafter remove the splined sleeve in preparation for the next cycle.